What is it about?
Counsellors and psychotherapists are typically trained to draw from their emotional and embodied responses when generating knowledge in clinical practice. What happens with this epistemological positioning when therapists engage in research? Using some own experiences from a recent mixed-method study into the impact of training on multilingual therapists, we will revisit our research process within an autoethnographic hybrid (Stanley 2005) approach, influenced by introspective and intersubjective reflexivity (Finlay and Gough 2003) with personal experience as ‘a route through which to produce academic knowledge’ (Pink 2009, p. 64). The study involved emotional entanglement on different levels; linguistically, personally and as an underpinning grappling with worldviews in light of the researchers' different epistemic origins. Supervision with space to explore emotional processes, free writing and engagement with literature in the field of embodied research are referred to as essential aspects of the research.
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Why is it important?
This study focuses on therapists’ embodied situatedness in research, with an interest in the emotional entanglement between the researcher and the researched during the data analysis phase. Therapists are typically trained to draw from their emotional and embodied responses when generating knowledge in clinical practice. What happens with this epistemological positioning when therapists engage in research? The stages during which therapist-researchers engage with their data to elicit ‘emergent themes’ from interview transcript is particularly under-researched.
Perspectives
Dr Sofie Bager-Charleson is the Director of Studies on the MPhil/PhD at Metanoia. She also teaches and supervises research students on the Professional Doctorate programme, DPsych and on the TA MSc at Metanoia/Middlesex University. She has published widely in the field of research reflexivity, including the text book Practice-based Research in Therapy: A Reflexive Approach (Sage, 2014) and acting as guest editor in the UKCP journal the Psychotherapist (2016) about Creative Use of Self in Research. She researches into Psychotherapy research (Bager-Charleson, Du Plock & McBeath 2017) and is the co-founder of IMPACT, a research network headed by Professor DuPlock at the Metanoia Institute, aimed to encourage the generation and exchange of ideas and knowledge within and beyond the Institute. For more information please go to our IMPACT web site on http://www.metanoia.ac.uk/research-publications/research/impact-research-network-irn/ Sofie is a UKCP and BACP registered psychotherapist and supervisor. She holds a PhD from Lund University in Sweden, specialising in attachment issues within families and reflective practice amongst teachers. Fields of special interest; • Research training for therapists • Epistemology • Narrative research/inquiry • Transcultural theory • Reflexivity
Sofie Bager-Charleson
Metanoia Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Embodied situatedness and emotional entanglement in research - An autoethnographic hybrid inquiry into the experience of doing data analysis, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, April 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/capr.12122.
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